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Governments Derive Their Just Powers From The Consent Of The Governed.
You Have Neither Solicited Nor Received Ours. We Did Not Invite You.
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"Geraldo Rivera could abort the mission?" Di Manes wonders.
Like all Q-pilots, his deductive abilities are well above the norm.
They didn't take just anyone. Time to op zone 1:35:42.
"Incorrect Specification," the computer says again. "'Geraldo Rivera' is implicit subject
of speculative clause, for example: 'Mission controllers might order flash
priority abort if Geraldo Rivera and film crew were parked 300 meters
downrange of primary.'"
You Do Not Know Us, Nor Do You Know Our World. Cyberspace Does Not Lie
Within Your Borders. Do Not Think That You Can Build It, As Though It
Were A Public Construction Project. You Cannot. It Is An Act Of Nature
And It
Grows Itself
Through Our Collective Actions.
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Di Manes considers. "That's what I figured." He
stretches out his left hand casually,
somehow manages to poke his thumb through
the access vent in his pressure glove, and while making to remedy this
little accident --
talk about clumsy -- jams his bare digit into the command-control
verifier. Of all things.
"Operator discretionary override, 217-27-9925, Di Manes, D.P.," he
recites. "Release code follows:
JANE COMMA STOP THIS CRAZY THING
BANG FULL STOP."
The Q-ship dips,
wobbles, then settles into an uncharacteristically linear glide. Di Manes blanks
WE SUGGEST THAT
OVERSOCIALIZATION IS AMONG THE MORE SERIOUS
CRUELTIES THAT HUMAN BEINGS INFLICT ON ONE ANOTHER.
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his visor and settles his hands on the control grips, bringing the ship neatly
back on course.
If they'd said Oprah, he might have stopped.
You see them sometimes even now,
IV. A READ-WRITE REVOLUTION
INTERACTIVE
NARRATIVES ARE WHAT IS WRITTEN,
WHETHER BY READER OR WRITER. AUTHORSHIP IS AN
INVITATION TO
ACTIVE DESIGN.
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the witnesses of that night, if you spend time in
certain remote places in the higher latitudes.
You can sit with them through the
few hours of daylight and they won't say a word or hardly twitch a muscle. Then as the
dark comes they will start to fidget, getting up to pace around the room or
stand by the windows. And in the middle of the night they will go staggering
out, bareheaded and coatless sometimes, if it's a night when the aurora comes on.
You might find a pair of them long gone in some subzero night of bonesplitting wind,
old man and old woman propped in each other's arms, their strange aged faces
thrown back and
their
eyes
filled with frozen tears.
What you have to do then
is drag them back inside
and plant them by the fire, because if you don't,
they will surely stand there
staring upwards until
they die
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